The ‘Kingmaker’ producer of Kollywood!

Imagine you made a short-film for a TV show on a village and its superstitions which went on to capture the imagination of the TV audience. A few years ago, your success would have culminated there. Not today! You can work on & improvise the script to make a feature film out of it and your work will have the backing of a film producer who will not hesitate to strategically spend on your film so it gets appropriate reach by the time of release. All this, of course if he believes the film deserves the push. His name is C V Kumar & that of his production house is Thirukumaran Entertainment. His track-record boasts of numbers and characteristics you will not be able to associate with even the big producers who have ‘been there, done that’. Just like the new age Googles & Amazons thwarting the ideologies of how to make successful & smart business in the technology sector, he is your new age producer in Tamil Cinema who has reached a stature unimaginable to achieve in 3 years’ time. Here’s one startling stat: So far, he has produced 5 films, there is 1 in post-production stage & 2 more in the pipeline & all of those 8 films have been with different directors, all of who have made (or) are making their debuts through his films – Talk of Inclusive growth & the talent of spotting a winning horse!

C V Kumar himself seems to have been a passionate fan of movies and that must have helped him reach where he is. With exposure to animation, sound-design & script-writing, he knew his way when he chose the films he would produce when he started his production house in 2010. That made him a producer with unique qualities but the most captivating thing about him was his breaking grounds with the traditional forms of promoting films & using inventive and smart strategies to make people take notice of the films he produced. Sample the case of his first production venture Attakathi. He did not hesitate to spend on promoting the audio of Attakathi, directed by Ranjith – an assistant of director Venkat Prabhu, and it worked. How? The film garnered the attention of producers with clout and was bought by Studio Green which in turn brought in contemporary film makers like Vetrimaran, Rajesh, Pandiraj to promote the film and that made it click at the box office! Content was, of course, king but without such promotional efforts, the film may have got washed away without a trace in the sea of films releasing every other week in Kollywood these days.

So far, he has produced 5 films, with 3 more in the pipeline & all of these 8 are/were from debutant directors.

If not for Kumar, Karthik Subbaraj may still have been roaming around the lanes of Kodambakkam with that gem of a script in his hand just like how the protagonist of Pizza roams around the town with his Pizza boxes. Extending the analogy, CV Kumar & his production house would probably have been Karthik’s equivalent of the fortune changing box of diamonds that Vijay Sethupathy gets hold of in Pizza! Pizza was professionally packed, so to speak, and Kumar was able to strike a deal with Sangam Cinemas & Red Giant films for publicity. He is also believed to have spent an amount equivalent to half the film’s budget on promoting it. The film was a runaway hit & with satellite and remake rights getting sold like hot Pizzas (pun intended!), the maker would have laughed all the way to the bank – that is if it was someone else in Kumar’s place. What did he do then?

He went on to use the resources from his first two successes to back and produce two more films Soodhu Kavvum & Villa giving a platform for a few more technical talents. Directed by Naalaya Iyakkunar fame Nalan Kumarasamy, Soodhu Kavvum gained cult status for its content & presentation and took its hero Vijay Sethupathy to stardom. By this time, Kumar’s introductions Santhosh Narayanan, Gopi Amarnath, Dinesh Krishnan, Leo John Paul , Dinesh, Vijay Sethupathy & Karthik Subbaraj had made their way as huge promises for the future in their respective lines of work.

He probably wanted to test waters with film distribution & took RS Prasanna’s light hearted film on a sensitive subject Kalyaana Samayal Saadham to distribute & that calculated move also worked! The film went on to make money for its producer & distributors. Kumar started 2014 the same way producing a taut thriller Thegidi giving a lease of life to a new set of promising technicians in talented director Ramesh, Hero Ashok Selvan (hero in Villa as well), Heroine Janani, Character artist Kaali Venkat, Music director Nivas Prasanna & editor Leo John Paul. These are names that would make a mark on Kollywood in the future and when they do so, there would be one person who they would all want to thank & it would be the guy who produces interesting films and promotes them in creative fashion under the banner ‘Thirukumaran Entertainment’ which is now a household name.

With a tie up with Fox Star Studios & promising projects like Mundasupatti (whose fascinating trailer can be watched here), the unnamed remake of Kannada stunner Lucia starring Siddharth, CV Kumar doesn’t look like dropping the ball anytime soon. Even as you read this piece here, he may be busy listening to the script of an aspiring director & making his calculations pondering whether the script deserves the backing of Thirukumaran Entertainment. If his decision were to be a ‘yes’, the aspiring film maker can rest assured that he would make it big in K-town, for, he has got the nod of the King … naaah … The ‘Kingmaker’ producer of Kollywood!